Locust Abortion Technician cover

Locust Abortion Technician

Released

The Butthole Surfers’ third album is split nearly 50-50 between goofy tape/noise experiments (“Kuntz,” “Weber,” “Hay”) and surprisingly heavy rock songs (“Sweat Loaf,” built on the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf,” the imitation thrash metal of “The O-Men,” and most amazingly, “Human Cannonball,” a cranked-up arena anthem with clearly audible — if still nonsensical — vocals and a massive, pounding beat). Two versions of the hellish stoner blues “Graveyard” bracket the album, and it ends with the nightmarish “22 Going On 23,” a psychedelic sludge jam introduced by a tape of a woman revealing herself (falsely) to a call-in radio show as the victim of sexual abuse.

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Crazy People Music cover

Crazy People Music

Branford Marsalis
The Peach Orchard cover

The Peach Orchard

In Order to Survive, William Parker
Gub cover

Gub

Pigface
Mariage cover

Mariage

Wau Wau Collectif
Playing cover

Playing

Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Dewey Redman
Science Fiction cover

Science Fiction

Ornette Coleman